Forest of the Forbidden

by W. J. May

  “You put your Siorghra on her?” Caleb screamed.

  Grace spoke matter-of-factly, “No, I did...to go with the costume.”

  Caleb threw his hand up to stop her. “I’ll speak with you later.” His eyes whipped over to me. “Who’s the boy?”

  I swallowed, trying to push the butterflies back down my throat. My shoulder blade began burning again. “Damon said... he knew what you are...” I took a deep breath. When Caleb didn’t reply I added, “He plans on destroying you.”

  “He what?” Caleb roared. His nostrils flared, and faster than I’d ever seen anyone move, he flung the desk across the room. Papers flew everywhere, as if trying to get away from him. “A boy? A damn boy tried to intimidate my family? Impossible!” He glared at all three of us on the couch. “Is this the first time?”

  My butt clung to the couch beneath me and I leaned against Michael’s shoulder. How could someone toss a desk like it was a book? Forcing courage, I made myself sit straight.

  Grace didn’t even flinch at Caleb’s outburst. “Damon hit on me a while back and got no where. He’s nothing, just a boy who’s jealous. He doesn’t know anything. It’s a bloody game.” She glanced at me before shifting back to Caleb. “He’s got a bit of a grudge and took it out on Rouge at school when were we hanging out in the courtyard a while back. He’s not worth it.”

  Caleb paced, his hands clenched behind his back. “This boy threatened you?” He turned and glowered at her, his eyes shone a brilliant blue. I pressed myself closer to Michael as he continued, “And you did nothing?”

  Sarah interrupted, “He’s human?”

  Michael nodded. “He’s young. Too young to be—”

  “He’s just an idiot on a steroid rant.” Grace met Caleb’s stare and then purposely turned to the overturned desk.

  Caleb’s angry voice rang across the room. “Is there anything about this person you do know? Who’s his family? His friends? Is he a serious threat? What and why does he know? Something’s being missed. A random nobody does get what the pendant represents. Does he need to be eliminated?”

  Sarah touched his shoulder. “We can’t get rid of him until we understand what he knows. Who he’s with. Kill without questioning him and we accomplish nothing. We must remove the threat–all of it.”

  She sounded military. What kind of lives had each of them led? What had they done in order to survive undetected to the human eye?

  Caleb stood statue still. “Michael, find out about this idiot, and if he and his little posse are any hindrance to us. Get rid of the girl, she’s of no use.” He dismissed us with a wave of his hand and stomped to his office, the slamming blood-red painted door reverberating throughout the house. Some kind of crystal shattered in the kitchen.

  Sarah touched Michael’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to Caleb.” She kissed him on the top of his head, and went into the office.

  “This isn’t good,” Grace whispered, more to herself than us.

  “Michael,” I said, my world crumbling and knowing I had to do what was right. “I don’t want trouble with Caleb. He’s right, your family comes first.” I reached and squeezed his hand before standing. “Take care of what you need to. I’m going to head home.”

  He stayed seated on the couch, looking confused.

  Grace jumped up and ran to the hall. “Take my car.”

  I caught the keys she tossed me automatically, like a robot, and watched her run up the stairs. Michael sat still frozen on the couch. All of a sudden my heart began tearing. He’s not going to fight for me. There’s no such thing as a white knight. After everything I’d learned, he hadn’t told me everything. I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  I walked the few steps back to him and leaned forward to lightly brush my trembling lips against his cheek.

  He whispered in my ear, “It’s not safe for you to be with us. I knew this was too dangerous. I should never have talked to you that night you were running. This is all my fault.” He gently traced my lips with a finger. “I’ll try and come for you, but it’s better if you just forget about us. Act like we never existed.”

  In dead silence, I left the house. First there’s Grollics and now... It was too much for my little head to comprehend. Driving home I realized I still had Michael’s Siorghra. I snorted. Well, at least he’ll have to see me one more time.

  I couldn’t shake the terrible sense of doom. We’d just been on the edge of something that felt so real. For the first time in my entire life, I was crying for someone I loved.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, I couldn’t tell if my head or heart hurt worse. My eyes stung from the tears I’d shed and my throat killed from the crying it had tried to swallow. However, my shattered heart made the thought of getting out of bed almost too hard to bear. Tempted to skip school I only went because I hoped to see Grace.

  Pulling into a parking space at school with the Smartcar, I wondered if Michael might drop Grace off. No such luck. I waited near the entrance of the school and reluctantly headed to class when the buzzer went.

  Her empty desk in first hour made my stomach drop. The only plus side of the day was Damon’s absence as well. I trudged through classes optimistic I might see Grace after school... only to be disappointed.

  I drove home after school, parked in the driveway and locked the door. I had no intention of driving it again. After the incident last night, returning the car without being asked didn’t seem likely. There was no way I would go to the house without being invited.

  Neither Michael nor Grace contacted me through the week or weekend. Three weeks past, and Jim and Sally began to grumble about me hanging out in the house. For the first time since moving in with them three years ago they didn’t want me around. I avoided them by staying in my room.

  In the darkened bedroom one evening, I lay staring at the cracked ceiling and wondered how to bring Grace’s car back. Did I have enough courage to drive to their house, knock on the door, and hand the key back? No way. I thought about parking it at the school and mailing the keys back but my luck, it would get towed away.

  “Get to the point, dipstick,” I mumbled to myself. I was pretending to wrack my brain only as an excuse to see Michael. It killed me that he hadn’t tried to contact me. No effort. Whatsoever. The guy spilled his guts and told me to leave. So much for liking the good guy.

  It’s all I had been thinking about, night and day for almost a month. Now I just didn’t want to think anymore.

  In a huff, I jumped off the bed and grabbed my backpack off the floor. I’d bought a calendar for the New Year. Flipping to January, I stared at the box with the number seven in it. My birthday. Eighteen. All that was left after that would be graduation, and then my freedom from the system.

  Which meant I’d be on my own.

  Slapping the calendar shut, I turned away and tapped my fingers against my leg. I needed distraction, something to do which didn’t require thinking about the future. Staring at the walls around my decrepit room, my eyes rested on the mess inside my closet. Perfect.

  I dropped to my knees and began tossing dirty clothes into one pile, others that needed to be hung into another and shoes to be paired to the side. While digging, I grabbed something rectangular and soft half buried in the clutter. I pulled it out and gasped.

  The Beast book. Grollic Monstrum.

  The worn leather felt comforting against my fingers. I flipped it open to the beginning. The first pages were written in some foreign language so I skimmed them, simply glancing at the drawings. Funny, I thought the first page had said something in English...like a definition or something.

  The closet mess forgotten, I crawled onto the bed. About a third of the way through the book, the words turned to English. It talked about a war between Grollics and their worst enemy, and how it all began. It turned into a narration and the beast in the forest seeming like a distant memory now, I settled into the pillows to read.

  An aged Grollic tried to help a young woman
lost in a forest looking for a cottage. She seemed afraid of the beast but dainty as she may have appeared, the woman had strength inside of her beyond any human ability. She threw the old man aside and attacked the others with him, killing all but him. She claimed she’d spared him as he’d tried to aid her, even though she had no right to save him.

  The eye for the eye. The old Grollic planned his revenge. He watched the woman and learned where she travelled. He waited for the day when the white-caped girl returned to the cottage on the other side of the woods. He raced ahead to the clearing and easily killed the unknowing man inside, then waited for the girl.

  The girl approached and the moment she entered the house, he attacked. Claws reaching to rip her neck just missed, but as the Grollic stumbled he sank his teeth into something warm. The girl grabbed a chair and smashed it over the Grollics back. They fought through the small cottage, breaking almost everything inside, including themselves.

  Near death, the girl barely managed to escape through a narrow window. How she managed to race away in to the forest, the Grollic thought he’d never know the answer. Her now red cape –covered in blood— flapped behind her as if nodding it knew the truth. The Grollic had killed because of what she had done to his family.

  The stunned Grollic stared. What he had thought was a cape, had actually been wings. Weak and shattered, he fell back against the wall. The fight between the two had nearly killed them both. He then understood their bloods could not mix. They shared unique powers, but those powers could never be blended. They each had the ability to destroy, as if they’d been born to battle against each other.

  Thus began the war as both vowed to never find peace until either race was obliterated. The Grollic may not have understood what he met that day, but he did learn the blood running inside his body could poison hers and vice versa.

  Holding the book between my fingers, I sat back, eyes wide. My favorite nursery story as a child was Little Red Riding Hood. Boy had this story changed from the original version.

  I turned the page. Both sides of the book had hand written, in point form, notes about the girl and possible ways to kill or stop her. Other questions asked if there was more than one girl and how they came into existence. Simple sketches filled the pages. I couldn’t make heads or tails of those any more than the handwritten stuff.

  Bile rose in the back of my throat when I flipped to the next page. The right side displayed a crudely hand drawn Grollic. A disgustingly ugly one. A series of diagrams showed a man turning into the Grollic. Each picture had detailed anatomy and notes along the sides. Interesting, the Grollic’s heart was actually on the right side of its body, higher up than on most animals or humans. In human-form, the heart rested on the left side but as he shifted into Grollic-form, the heart would also shift.

  It was the last picture my eyes kept flitting back to - the mammoth size of the beast, the ferocious face with yellow eyes and snarl of sharp teeth. The drawing so life like, it kept bringing me back to that night in the forest.

  I shivered, and tried to swallow. An eerie scraping noise against my window nearly had me screaming. I closed my eyes, willing the noise to stop.

  It didn’t.

  Inhaling a long, slow breath, I then opened my eyes and focused on the window, too scared to get up and look outside. Don’t be such a freakin’ wimp. Squinty, I realized the wind had picked up and a broken branch hung onto another limb. It scraped against the window as the wind blew the still connected limb. A big gust knocked the loose branch down and the ting against the roof of Jim’s car told me it’d landed.

  My heart still in my throat, I shook my head in disgust. Wimp. Loser. I chided myself. Get back to reading. Except I now had to put my hand over the monster’s picture to focus on the other side of the book. I stared at the human drawing. A small marking caught my attention, above the right aorta of the heart near the collar bone. It showed a detailed drawing of the tattoo on the corner of the page. I squinted. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled seeing it before. Scratching my scalp, I couldn’t place where.

  The remainder of the book switched back into the weird foreign writing. I shut it and tossed it onto my nightstand. Enough stupid monsters for one night. The clock radio read 1:30 a.m. Before switching the light off, I glanced at my messy pile on the floor. It would give me something to do, a reason to get out of bed since tomorrow was Saturday.

  Weird dreams visited me throughout the night. Grollics and angels killing each other, cutting themselves and letting their blood drip into the enemy’s cuts. Girls in red dresses and capes running through forests, with white monsters in pursuit. Tattoos on everyone to mark if they were Grollic, angel, or human. Angels morphing into beasts scarier than a Grollic.

  I woke early with the feeling I never really slept. Covered in sweat, I threw a pillow over my head and tried to fall back asleep. The sun had not yet risen, and I didn’t want to get up with nothing to do but put my shoes and clothes away. After forty minutes, a few tiny little rays of light began peeking through my window.

  Throwing on my red-hooded sweatshirt and a clean pair of jeans, I turned to leave. I ran back to the nightstand to grab a ponytail holder and saw the Grollic book. I grabbed it too. If I was going to go see the sunrise, I might as well have something to look through. Less scary in the daylight.

  It was cool enough that no fog or mist had come in during the night. I walked to the cemetery-park Michael and I had met, buying a latte at a Starbucks along the way. At the park I sat on a bench, drinking, as I watched the sun make its way over the horizon. Beautiful and peaceful. The world kept turning even when it felt like mine had stopped.

  After an hour my bladder told me it’d had enough. I jumped up to throw my empty cup into a garbage on the path when a sudden realization hit me like a punch in the gut. I stumbled back to the bench and sat dumbfounded. The mark!

  I’d seen it before on somebody. That day in the courtyard.

  Could the beast be human?

  Damon.

  Damon’s a Grollic.

  When he’d threatened me during Halloween, he thought I was the same thing as the Knightlys. Impossible! Michael, Grace or Caleb would know. Right?

  I thought back to my encounter with Damon in the school parking lot. I’d worn the necklace. Michael’s Siorghra had blood inside which could kill him. He thought I could kill him. Another thought hit me like a wave of nausea. It was Damon in the woods the night on the beach.

  He said there were more of his kind.

  Michael and his family must know. But what if they didn’t? What if Damon’s pack was ready to attack Michael’s family? What if they already had? And I’d done nothing.

  Running home as fast as I could, I took the stairs two at a time and grabbed the keys to Grace’s car. Jim hollered something at me as I raced out the door. I ignored him. There wasn’t time to argue or explain.

  I unlocked, tossed the book on the seat and stuck the keys in the ignition. The car started and revved as if it knew I had to hurry. I shoved the gearshift into drive and flew down the roads, fingers crossed for no police. They were the least of my worries. Hopefully Caleb wouldn’t kill me and ask questions later.

  Or maybe, he would and I’d find out I’m one of them.

  The car slowed to a crawl when it came to their driveway. My foot could not press the gas pedal. Maybe this is a mistake. How could a simple human figure out something useful to a family, especially one like Caleb? If they were okay, they probably were planning some counter-attack.

  “Stop being such a wimp,” I hissed at my reflection in the review mirror. “Just go up to the house and bang on the door. Hand the book to whoever opens and tell them Damon’s a Grollic. Then leave.” I’d have to walk home but at least I could return the keys and necklace and try to forget them and move on with my life.

  I parked beside the mustang and marched towards the house, forcing through the urge to run away. Hand in the air, ready to bang on the door; I realized I’d left the book on
the passenger seat. About to turn around to grab it, the door swung open.

  Michael.

  My body froze, but my heart hammered at record breaking speed. Dressed in a white shirt, his tanned skin looked perfect. I couldn’t stop myself from staring. My thoughts over the past few weeks had left so many details out. The rush of feelings caught off guard.

  If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t let on. “Hello, Rouge.”

  Stuffing my hands into my jean pockets, I cleared my throat and tried to sound normal. “I know you told me not to come, but there’s something really important I need to tell you.”

  “Has something happened?” He stepped onto the porch and glanced behind me, most likely scanning for hidden monsters.

  “No...Yes...Maybe.” I blinked a bunch of times, ticked my eyes burned.

  “It’s dangerous you’re here.”

  His words or posture gave away nothing. I couldn’t read his thoughts. “I know.” I swallowed, my eyes darting inside as I tried to calm the anxiety inside me.

  His expression broke. He wavered and looked as lost as me.

  I stepped toward him and stumbled, unable to keep my knees from buckling. His arms surrounded me and he held me tight. My head instinctively went to his chest and I left it there, inhaling his wonderful masculine aftershave, the taut muscles under his shirt, his warmth, all of it. Would it be wrong to want to stay here forever? I then remembered the real reason I’d come. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I pushed him back a few inches so I could think. “We really need to talk. Can I come in?”

  “Maybe it would be better out here.” He paused and his eyes shifted back and forth at mine.

  I shook my head and exhaled a long breath. “I think I’d better come in and you should get Caleb, Sarah and Grace.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  I paused, thinking I might need a bullet proof vest and remembered a better devise for protection. “Just need to grab something from the car.”